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Thanks everyone for coming out! For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be Playing and Rating the games you created.You NEED ratings to get a score at the end. Play and Rate games to help others find your game.We’ll be announcing Ludum Dare 36’s August date alongside the results.

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About HybridMind

I'm Dave Evans, aka HybridMind and I've been participating here since Ludum Dare 11 back in April 2008.

Ludum Dare is largely responsible for getting me back into my childhood dream of game development and I started my own game studio in January 2009 called Hybrid Mind Studios. I currently focus on making fun and original games using Flash and Unity.

jolle says ...

Feels too random. Might have to wait a lot at some platforms, and sometimes get in situations where can't survive.

Surrealix says ...

Really great idea, and the implementation isn't too bad. The music/background generated by the platforms is a fun idea, but the movement of them seemed a little too random. I spent a long time just waiting around, which wasn't all that fun. A jump button for when I've got 2mm to move up would be really helpful there. Lovely minimalist graphics, and the transform between min & mo looked nice.

saluk says ...

A little too much waiting, but it's very minimal, and I liked the concept a lot. Just needs some balancing.

phren says ...

Very well made, real attention to detail on the flowers etc. :) I noticed I was "waiting" quite a lot while playing the game, which wasn't all that fun. The sounds were a bit annoying, but they were great for the atmosphere, and I give you an A for effort on those. Overall a pretty nice game. :P

Devon says ...

Not only did we have the same death bug, but our sfxr death sounds are very similar as well! and both are loud and annoying...

I like the piano loop thing, very hypnotic with the changing colors. Great mood and style. The little things (grass, subtle color changes, and transformation animations) and variety of sounds really added to the experience.

I agree about the waiting. Too much randomness (also a problem with my game ;)) but that's what happens when you're trying to get done in time!

Wiering says ...

Interesting idea, but you have to wait too much, and that makes it less fun. I liked the music though.

mikeware says ...

I like the style of the game a lot. I just feel like I need a jump button... And maybe pillars that I'm next to should move more than the others so I won't have to wait as long. Or at least with jump, if the pillar is a pixel or two taller, I'd be good to go.

pekuja says ...

Too much time was spent waiting for the pillars to move. Crushing enemies wasn't really as fun as I'd hope it to be. It was also ridiculous when the next pillar was just a couple of pixels taller, but the worm couldn't climb on it.

SethR says ...

Clean and smooth. Agree with the others about the waiting. The audio/platform movement relation was strangely hypnotic.

GBGames says ...

I liked how hypnotic it was to listen to the rising and falling of the towers. It was a very peaceful game to play. Even getting killed by the enemy was a very smooth sounding death. That is, it wasn't a jarring way to take you out of the game, which is the opposite of how my game was.

If you think about it in this way, then the waiting was a very meditative experience, but otherwise, patience is a virtue that takes too long. B-)

drZool says ...

Too slow

keeyai says ...

Cool idea, but give me jump! I want more control, especially if I have to wait around for platforms. Also, why isn't mo a toggle? I died three times because the red snake on lvl 1 would pass over, bounce back, and be on my when I un-mo, and that was that. 3 times of that plus all the waiting around and I quit.

jlnr says ...

Woah, definitely a very interesting entry with a lot of polish in unexpected places. Love the flowers. I think all of the graphics would have looked a bit cleaner (yet still minimal) with a more vector/antialiased look.
Very hypnotic soundscape, and one that still suits the theme well. Give it some really ambient background sounds and stereo for the rest of the sound effects (flowers, landing) and I'd play it just for that!
As others have said, gameplay suffers a bit from the randomness, and I also wasn't that good at crushing enemies. Should be easy to fix though :)

philhassey says ...

I thought the music was sort of interesting. The moving bars were cool, but sometimes frustrating.

Hamumu says ...

The random raising and lowering is dumb, because it makes your progress completely random. I also got killed by randomness - 2 S's were on me, I mo'd out on them, and they walked past, but when I changed back automatically, they were on me again since they had bounced off a wall.

The whole randomness thing totally ruins it. There really is no game because of that. If it weren't that way, it could really be something interesting. I liked the sounds the background made, and the changing back and forth (and using the changing to squish guys), although I really should've been able to stay Mo as long as I wanted... that would solve the unfair kills part.

pansapiens says ...

Cute game, very nice sound. Graphics are clean and suitibly minimal. Something about the gameplay needs a tweak, to make it faster or give the user more 'control' (maybe tunnels through the sliding blocks, and more enemies ?). It's a slick little package, and a wonderful achievment for 48 hours, but in the current state wouldn't keep me coming back for more. I couldn't crush enemies from above as Mo, but I maybe I wasn't doing it right.

Dathgale says ...

Extremely tedious waiting for the columns to move. There's no strategy in the game either-- just stay next to the walls and turn mo whenever a red snake is about to touch you. If there were a timer and you had some control over the columns, or if the red snakes were more intelligent and made it so you could die from something other than carelessness, then the game could be more interesting.

And the red snakes need a squishing animation for when you fall on them.

jovoc says ...

i don't have a long enough attention span for this. Still, the game worked well and the concept was really neat, it would be cool to see a platformer with better controls where the level randomly changed like that.

Archive for the ‘LD #11 – Minimalist – 2008’ Category

Two win32 versions are now available, a fullscreen and a windowed. No other changes were made to gameplay or bugs. The resolution is 1024×768. I recommend the fullscreen version for a more immersive experience. 😉

The goal is to get from the left of the screen to the right of the screen. Each time you do the world will advance one level. Each level brings more flowers and enemies to overcome.

You play as a character with two forms. “Min” – who is thin, vulnerable and snakelike. “Mo” – who is an invulnerable and immovable gelatinous mass.

You can only move around when you are Min but if you are falling off of a block you can transform into Mo to crush enemies below you. If you happen to be cornered by an ememy as Min, you can transform into Mo to let them pass by safely. You can only get hit by the enemies once or the game ends. You can continue though so never fear!

The game world consists of rising and falling blocks that also play the music of the game in time to their movements. There are little flowers that grow from time to time that you can collect for points.

Bitmaps created in Tile Studio after some initial concept art inspiration in Corel Draw.

I finished this with 3 minutes left in the deadline. That means that I didn’t have a chance to play it that much to tune for fun. It is functional and seems stable. The player crushing enemies collision detection could be a little better for sure and the levels could advance in a more interesting way. All in all I am very happy with having completed this project in such a short time. I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it under the deadline the past 4 hours or so leading up to the end so I am glad that I actually managed to pull something off. I’ll post a post mortem later perhaps. I can’t wait to check out all the other entries! Good luck and congrats to everyone who participated!

So, after some sleep last night I have finally finished a good working pass on all the character vs moving blocks collision tests. Had a few bugs / kinks to work out that I introduced due to tiredness last night. Now everything seems stable and falling seems to work good enough for now. Plus, the characters position correctly updates as the blocks move up and down and the character can now fall down and meet a moving block without problems. Plus, thanks to the new algorithms I should be able to implement similar ones for any other objects / obstacles / enemies I manage to implement in next 8 hrs or so! 😉

Well, I’m back up and starting to wake up.. (mmm coffee) I was too tired last night to tag the evening with a journal update as to progress of MinMo so I think I’ll do that now as I recollect my thoughts and tasks for the day.

I managed to get about 3-4 hrs of code in last night during which I got the block classes correctly picking new heights, updating to the new heights etc. It looks really neat in motion and there is something about it’s minimalism that I do like.

I got the player char position to be updated as the blocks rise and fall and started working on more advanced collision detection. I need the char to correctly get stuck in the block valleys and be able to move left and right only when their block is above neighboring blocks. Sounds simple enough right? 😉

I managed to piece something together that was crudely working after fighting through some annoying bugs but basically hit a wall of tiredness where I was causing more harm than good. So, I went to bed hoping to refactor a bit better / clearer algorithm in the morning and then hopefully add a few more elements to make this thing a ‘game’ and maybe even slightly ‘fun’. I still have hope even though there is less than 10 hrs left in the compo.

Well, I’m back a couple hours later than I thought I might be (go figure..) 😉 But, I did snag one great picture of copious amounts of dead thing grilling over a backyard fire at a friend’s house.

Anyway, I’m back and checking out all the posts and happenings I missed while most of you were still coding away today! Gotta get back on the coding horse if I’m gonna pull this thing off tomorrow, still a lot to do!

Here is another screenshot of MinMo. I have got a basic ‘block’ class defined and working for the land now. Basically, keeping to the concepts of the theme with min and max (or mo?) the blocks will be moving up and down possibly signaling their moves with color changes ahead of time. Another minimalist thing I’m trying to incorporate is that your little MinMo player guy can’t jump. You will have to use the moving of the ground blocks to get around the world. You WILL be able to fall though and I’m still thinking up what kinda of implications this may have. I am still brainstorming other aspects of the game (enemies, goodies etc) but nothing too concrete yet.

So, now I’m off to a birthday party I’m throwing for my girlfriend so I won’t be back for about 6 hours or so. Then it is a late night sprint on the game, some minimal sleep and the final crunch on Sunday to pull this thing off. Good luck all!

Finally got a screen shot here along with a link if anyone on win32 wants to try my character test and let me know if my exe doesn’t work. Basically got my character tiles from last night all coded in and initially timed between states.

The current player character MinMo has two states. A ‘Min’ state where he is a little thin snake and a gelatinous block ‘Mo’ state where he can’t move but will probably be invincible. You are frozen as ‘Mo’ currently until the time is up where you then transform back to ‘Min’.

You use arrows to move left and right, space to transform, and ESC quits. Now for more game elements!

Well, it’s about 3am here EST and I think I’ve gotta shuffle off to bed. I’ve spent the past 4 or so hours working in art programs on concept art and haven’t written a lick of code. I’ve basically been listening to Deep Mix / Moscow Radio which I’ve found very inspirational for this theme whilst I’ve drawn animated bitmaps to the beat.

I started out in Corel Draw and then ended up in Tile Studio. I got inspired while I was in Corel Draw and then took some of the concepts over to Tile Studio to flesh out further in tile / bitmap format. I came up with my main character animation sprite sets and got a nice test animation that I actually don’t know how to dump out to an animated gif to share. Too tired to figure that out right now, so nothing visual to share yet. Now I just need to keep fleshing out the scope of the game / gameplay and see if I can code something usable in time! Phew..!

I’ve enjoyed seeing everyone’s posts and chats in the IRC channel. I hope you are all having a good time! 😉 What an adventure.

Well, while I try and step back from the IRC channel for a bit to collect my thoughts on the theme announced ‘Minimalist’ I feel nothing would hit the spot better then some minimalist toasted -o’s. No fluff here, just the bare essentials.

Hey all- I’m also going to be attempting my first LD and thought I’d make a quick post to test out this here blog system and say ‘Howdy’ to everyone here while I was at it. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a few weeks since I found out about it a month or two ago. I plan on using Ruby/Gosu and perhaps Chipmunk if the theme warrants some hardcore physics fun.